High SpeedHalo

Waiting for Olipants

Jul 032011
 
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Did you feel that there only being 30 seconds between the Legendary and Easy Times for Coastal Highway was too little? Good news! Now it’s nearly a minute!

The most frustrating part of Coastal is that the vast majority of the level is gated, with a minimum time determined by the speed of the Oliphant. If it weren’t for that you could get through this level very quickly indeed!

On Easy difficulty, there isn’t much of a threat to either yourself or the Oliphant so essentially you have to entertain yourself while waiting for it to catch up; I tried to do this through most of the level by getting splatters or using slightly different means to dispatch the minimal opposition. Like giving Buck an FRG!

Actually, it saves a bit of time giving it to him now, rather than at the Firefight area. The opposition isn’t such that you need the combination of his (sub-par) turret skills and your epic driving skills to get through.

Ultimately, I felt the tank was a bit overkill on the last few segments, so grabbed another guass ‘hog along the way instead. It’s also useful to have one anyway, for the very last section of the highway, so you can speed down the final ramp.

That massive slowdown in the video at 14:35 in the video actually is in game. It’s a fairly regular occurance when speed running this level and I believe it has to do with the ‘hog overlapping with the invisible barrier which spawns to block the way back to the highway; so thats why I grenaded it.

On the first wave, the Pistol is only good at headshots (which it is really good at) but when those Grunts got away, it would have been much more valuable to have a Carbine instead. I remember to pick one up after that awfulness.

Oh, and I get 2 Killionaires in this run :)

–Main improvements–
As said, since much of this level is gated, the main improvements have to come at the start or end of the level. The start is already optimised since its just a straight-line run. The time saved came from the fight at the end where I had a much tighter strategy; essentially spawn-killing the Brutes and Grunts by getting in close and using the Rockets.

I kinda messed up on the second wave a little and had my rocket locations out of whack. Fortunately I don’t think I lost too much time there.

–Room for improvement?–
Not much; just minor optimisations on the final fight. Unless you could find a way through the doors early! Anyone got a Forklift handy?

~ RC Master

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I’m an ODST Millionnaire!

Oct 222010
 
http://files.mythica.org/halo/highimpacthalo/highspeed/ODST/CoastalHwy/CoastalHighwayHighScore_533286_RCMaster.mp4

Quick Summary:

Stats – 533,286 points scored with 6 Gold skulls on and 1 Silver in 23:28 for a 2x time multiplyer. 188 kills were made. No penalties taken. Tool of Destruction was the Scorpian tank with 68 kills. Most enemies killed was Grunt Infantry. The most earned medal was the Headshot medal; 31 times. While the most lucrative was the Invincible and Splatter Spree medals which earned 13,513 and 13,512 points respectively.

–

Are you tired of seeing me just rushing past enemies or being a pansy and letting Buck and Dare do the work on Coastal Highway? Well, this run should be right up your street!

This is my second score run for HSH, and also my second Half-a-Million pointer. Making me an ODST Millionaire with only 2 of the levels done!

Its crucial to preserve as much as of the time bonus as possible, as this can easily double or even triple your points. As such, I still basically run through the first section, only making a minor detour to grab a Rocket Launcher to deliver a couple of explosive punches into the Brutes’ lines. In the end, I still had a minute and a half of my 2x time bonus left, so an improvement would be to mop up the enemies here as well; you’ve got plenty of Rockets.

On the first section of the highway, I hop out for some delicious headshot style-medal bonuses on the first gaggle of grunts, then do my best to rack up some splatters. This’ll become my main-stay for the majority of the Warthog sections: splatter as many as I can, while Buck cleans up the rest.

I rather messed up on the Drones though; that Rocket was meant to be a serious multi-kill. If I’d have gotten set up there earlier; I might have been able to double rocket the whole lot. Definite potential for a Killionnaire there. Buck kind of sucks as a gunner as well; this is pre-Halo: Reach! They don’t overheat! Hold that trigger down! Eventually I get frustrated and just do it myself! Yes Buck, I am a much better shot than you.

With the Ghosts, Buck takes way too long on the turret, and is liable to killing just the driver. I opt to rocket them instead. Though I probably should have left Buck more behind cover: I swear he steals some of my kills.

In the first Guass section, Buck kills a lot of drivers, and not many vehicles: ARGH! I found it too dangerous to use the Guass cannon myself, but if could have, ooooh the points.

The last Guass section is difficult anyway. Trying to balance survival and killing stuff was tough. I didn’t make much of a dent and quickly had to bail out. Fortunately; I got the Scorpian soon after :)

The multi-kill bonuses in ODST are pretty insane; if you could manage to put one shot into each Banshee, and then down them all one after another, you’d get an epic amount of points.

On the next section, not killing the Phantoms is completely intentional; you get way more points for killing the Ghosts than you do for killing the Phantoms. Perhaps, if you brought them to where a single shot would kill them, you could use them to increase your multi-kill multiplyer after you kill one of the Ghosts. You won’t be able to get all of them though. Oh, running over that Shade turret would have gotten you a double-splatter medal multiplyer. Remember that. I simply didn’t want Buck to kill the gunner first.

In the final section of the Highway with enemies, you can actually get a couple of Killionnaires here. The window, including time between your Scorpian shots, is very narrow, so I missed it this time. The oppurtunity exists however!

In the next couple of sections, there are no enemies. Well, at least none you can actually kill :(

I simply grab the transport ‘hog to speed down the last ramp.

Buck messed up my double assassination on the Grunts in the last area, so thats why I roll my screen at him!

I’m not sure quite why I gave Dare my RL. I was trying to speed up the last battle I guess. But with what the final time ended up being, I needn’t have bothered, and she steals kills anyway!

The Jackal and Hunter wave was a bit awful, I have to say. I was a bit paranoid about the jackal snipers killing me, then theres was that stubborn shield jackal, and Buck and Dare couldn’t seem to do anything to the Hunters! A bit of quick thinking meant I could secure the kills for myself, so not all was lost.

The last wave, the Brutes, could have been done with a few more multi-kills. Alas, I hadn’t figured out good placement for multi-killing them with the rockets by the time of this run, and I was also tired after 20 minutes; not many runs are this long ya know?

Still though; many, many points were scored :D